True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 443: Crashing in Mindanao
Aired: 2025-03-11
Duration: 01:37:53


=== Opening the Door (04:02) ===

[00:00:00]  I miss her.
[00:00:02]  Yeah, say more.
[00:00:03]  Just feels like, I mean, there's literally an empty chair here.
[00:00:08]  Yeah.
[00:00:08]  You know?
[00:00:09]  For the prophet Elijah?
[00:00:12]  Yeah.
[00:00:12]  For the prophet Elijah.
[00:00:14]  For the prophet Eliza.
[00:00:16]  I got to tell you, if she was to perish, or God forbid, quit the show.
[00:00:21]  Which would be worse.
[00:00:23]  Significantly.
[00:00:24]  I would kill her.
[00:00:25]  That was a question, but you're saying quitting the show would be worse than Elizabeth.
[00:00:28]  I agree.
[00:00:28]  That would be worse.
[00:00:30]  I think I would kill you and then myself.
[00:00:33]  Okay.
[00:00:34]  I don't think that we could go on.
[00:00:35]  You agree?
[00:00:36]  I think I would find the strength, but fair enough.
[00:00:40]  I think I would find the strength.
[00:00:41]  If Liz quit the show.
[00:00:43]  Yeah.
[00:00:43]  If Liz quit the show, I would kill you and then immediately kill myself.
[00:00:49]  Like with a gun.
[00:00:51]  Which at whatever I got.
[00:00:53]  I'm just trying to play it out.
[00:00:54]  Games out.
[00:00:55]  Gun, fire, whatever.
[00:00:58]  I think the gun and then fire is usually the.
[00:01:01]  No, but if I'm killing myself, I've already been caught.
[00:01:03]  You know what I mean?
[00:01:04]  We'd go out like Hackman and the wife.
[00:01:07]  Yeah, we'd like to apologize to the family of Gene Hackman for that comment.
[00:01:36]  Great.
[00:01:36]  What a great legacy of the intro and of Gene Hackman.
[00:01:42]  I know.
[00:01:42]  Conversation.
[00:01:43]  Yeah, he was in the conversation.
[00:01:45]  Royal Ten and Bombs.
[00:01:45]  He was not in the conversation anymore.
[00:01:47]  No.
[00:01:47]  Well, there's still some conversations.
[00:01:49]  Now he's among the Royal Tenant Bombs.
[00:01:50]  Forget them.
[00:01:51]  He's with the King of Kings now.
[00:01:53]  That's true.
[00:01:54]  He's with God.
[00:01:57]  And speaking of, my name is Brace.
[00:02:01]  We're living a moment of silence.
[00:02:05]  And I'm producer Young Chomsky.
[00:02:07]  And this is.
[00:02:08]  It's Truanon.
[00:02:09]  You have to do it now.
[00:02:10]  Hello.
[00:02:10]  Hello.
[00:02:13]  This is a special edition of Truanon Called and another thing.
[00:02:16]  And so for the next two hours and 15 minutes, I will be complaining about things that I've noticed that have been happening in this world that have just bothered me.
[00:02:26]  First thing, before we get to another thing, what is the deal now?
[00:02:31]  Sometimes, you know, you're running late.
[00:02:33]  You got to get an Uber or whatever.
[00:02:35]  This is not sponsored content, you know, but you got to get one.
[00:02:37]  A ride-sharing.
[00:02:38]  Ride-sharing, some kind of ride-sharing thing.
[00:02:41]  Really, you're not sharing the ride anymore.
[00:02:43]  It's a taxi.
[00:02:45]  They don't have the cheap share thing.
[00:02:47]  Remember the cheap sharing?
[00:02:48]  They brought it back, but nobody seems to do it.
[00:02:50]  No.
[00:02:50]  I don't do that.
[00:02:51]  I'm banned from that.
[00:02:52]  Okay.
[00:02:52]  Just because.
[00:02:53]  Body odor.
[00:02:54]  No, touching.
[00:02:55]  But They have these fucking minivans now with handles on the door.
[00:03:03]  Yes.
[00:03:04]  For my whole life, every time I've seen a door handle of any kind, there's one thing you do.
[00:03:08]  You open it.
[00:03:09]  Right.
[00:03:10]  Not something.
[00:03:12]  They get mad.
[00:03:12]  And they're furious at you for opening the door.
[00:03:15]  You fucking moron.
[00:03:17]  Why?
[00:03:17]  That's the one thing you can't ever do is open that door.
[00:03:21]  I am at the mercy of this gentleman driving this vehicle to let me in and out.
[00:03:28]  What is this?
[00:03:29]  Yeah.
[00:03:30]  And another thing.
[00:03:31]  You're right.
[00:03:31]  And another thing.
[00:03:33]  I got to tell you, I think that people, things have gotten dumber.
[00:03:38]  That's true.
[00:03:39]  Things have gotten dumber.
[00:03:41]  I think I maybe said this last episode, but I got to say it again.
[00:03:47]  Actually, I don't know if I want to say it because we have like a dignified guest.
[00:03:50]  There's a certain word that I've been using very, for a very long time that went out of vogue due to woke.
[00:03:57]  And then briefly we were allowed to say again, but now it's too gauche.

=== Woke Words Gone Gauche (02:23) ===

[00:04:02]  Right.
[00:04:02]  We can't do that.
[00:04:04]  Yeah.
[00:04:05]  It's there's a lot of things.
[00:04:07]  There's too everything is gauche.
[00:04:08]  Everything.
[00:04:09]  It's just tasteless.
[00:04:12]  It's all, I don't know what, it's chicken or the egg, but with the AI slop, it's like, did that cause people to lose discernment or did they, do they like that shit because they have none?
[00:04:22]  But it's just like, you have no taste.
[00:04:25]  None.
[00:04:26]  It's so bad.
[00:04:27]  It's ridiculous.
[00:04:28]  And so now it's, it's, there was like a brief there was a, there was a, there was a respite of like a week between the woke hegemony and the anti-woke hegemony, where things were, were, were kind of in flux.
[00:04:41]  And now the anti-woke is just the law of the land.
[00:04:44]  It's awful.
[00:04:45]  Yeah.
[00:04:45]  I can't stand it.
[00:04:46]  Meet the old, meet the new boss, same as the old boss, as they say.
[00:04:50]  That's what they say.
[00:04:51]  And another thing.
[00:04:52]  What's up?
[00:04:53]  Who is the audience for The Lion King, but without a cartoon?
[00:05:00]  Are they still doing that?
[00:05:01]  They did The Little Mermaid.
[00:05:02]  They did The Lion King.
[00:05:04]  They made these cartoons of them.
[00:05:05]  Yeah.
[00:05:06]  And now they have live-action versions of this.
[00:05:09]  Are those to people?
[00:05:10]  Are they doing well?
[00:05:11]  I'm not really keeping tasks.
[00:05:12]  I think they're probably making more money than many nations.
[00:05:15]  People seem to get really mad.
[00:05:17]  Because they have an attachment to these cartoon characters.
[00:05:19]  Yeah.
[00:05:20]  Well, this is a sub-other thing.
[00:05:22]  They have to make there needs to be way either way less laws or way more laws.
[00:05:27]  But they have to, if you have it, cartoons, you cannot, it is bad for you after like 15, 16.
[00:05:34]  Like, you can- To watch cartoons.
[00:05:36]  To watch cartoons.
[00:05:37]  Right.
[00:05:37]  I- I'm including your little Bojack Horseman and your little fucking- Oh, this one's actually really mature.
[00:05:42]  It's for adults.
[00:05:43]  No, we're not doing that.
[00:05:45]  But you should definitely not have an attachment to the Lion King.
[00:05:49]  Yeah.
[00:05:50]  The songs were good, though, in the old one.
[00:05:52]  That's more your, I don't like musicals.
[00:05:54]  Elton John?
[00:05:55]  You like musicals, though.
[00:05:57]  I don't avidly listen to musicals anymore, but I call them like I see them.
[00:06:01]  Lion King had fucking great songs.
[00:06:03]  I think they're just stink.
[00:06:04]  I never was like a big Elton John guy, but I mean, man.
[00:06:07]  Man, that's not what I heard.
[00:06:09]  Well, I don't know who you're talking to, but Elton John genius, genius, songwriter.
[00:06:13]  I don't like him.
[00:06:14]  I don't have much of an opinion on him, but like you listen to Goodbye Yelbrick Road or your song and tell me that the man's not brilliant.
[00:06:23]  Or fucking Can You Feel Love Tonight?

=== Encountering Terror's History (15:23) ===

[00:06:26]  The Circle of Life.
[00:06:27]  I just can't wait to be king.
[00:06:30]  This is, you're going to go beat.
[00:06:31]  This is, I am, now, look at this.
[00:06:33]  I've made a fool of myself.
[00:06:34]  I'm not going to go see it.
[00:06:35]  They're great songs.
[00:06:36]  Yeah.
[00:06:36]  Well, I'm not seeing that.
[00:06:37]  I'm not seeing a Lion King musical.
[00:06:38]  I'm not seeing any of this stuff.
[00:06:39]  I'm 35.
[00:06:40]  You know what I watch?
[00:06:41]  Rothko.
[00:06:42]  That's what you watch.
[00:06:43]  I watch Rothko.
[00:06:44]  The animated music.
[00:06:46]  Animated.
[00:06:46]  Well, I just want, you know what I put it in?
[00:06:47]  I put it into an AI-generated thing to make it swirl around a little bit.
[00:06:51]  I go to the Rothko Immersive Experience downtown.
[00:06:54]  Everything's crazy to me.
[00:06:57]  Well, pivoting to higher class intellectual conversations, what are we talking about today?
[00:07:03]  Thank you.
[00:07:04]  Wow, look at that.
[00:07:04]  That's somebody's got to do it.
[00:07:07]  And another thing.
[00:07:09]  A few years ago, I went to the Philippines, right?
[00:07:11]  Yeah.
[00:07:12]  And, you know, I'm like, all right, time to relax.
[00:07:15]  I'm in the islands now.
[00:07:17]  And when I got there, what did I see?
[00:07:19]  What?
[00:07:19]  Poverty, penury, misery.
[00:07:21]  It was horrible.
[00:07:22]  And I thought, this is crazy.
[00:07:23]  People can't live like this.
[00:07:26]  And, you know, I started digging into it and I learned a lot about the history.
[00:07:30]  And, you know, I'm sort of asking Socratic questions in this.
[00:07:33]  I don't know if that's the real way to phrase that.
[00:07:35]  But I'm asking clarified questions of this.
[00:07:37]  I know a little bit about the Philippines, but I, you know, I was having our guests explain.
[00:07:41]  So if I sound like a dumbass in the next hour, that is purely artificial.
[00:07:48]  But I got there and I was like, this is crazy.
[00:07:49]  No one can live like this.
[00:07:51]  And I started researching alternatives to living like this.
[00:07:54]  And what I discovered would shock you.
[00:07:57]  There's some people in the Philippines who do not like the way that the Philippines is governed, and they have made a big stink about it.
[00:08:03]  But the Philippine government has gone absolutely berserk over the past 50 years in response.
[00:08:10]  And they're continuing to go to berserk today.
[00:08:11]  There's Americans dying over there.
[00:08:13]  And so we have Bernadette from Bayan USA here to talk to us about the Philippines.
[00:08:19]  And here's the interview.
[00:08:35]  Rising from the mists out of the Sulu Sea, west of Palau, is the Philippines, an island nation of like 100 million something people.
[00:08:49]  Now, I just heard about this place, ladies and gentlemen, but there has been a lot going on there in the past month.
[00:08:56]  And then I looked into it further.
[00:08:57]  It turns out they have a Wikipedia page thousands of years, but specifically the past month.
[00:09:04]  And then also even a little more or less, actually, it would be less specifically, maybe the past 70 years.
[00:09:09]  And then actually even less specifically than that, like 150 years.
[00:09:13]  And then less specifically than that, probably, I guess, the rest of time.
[00:09:16]  And I was shocked to hear about this.
[00:09:17]  I thought there were about three or four countries.
[00:09:20]  Kind of everybody, you know, you kind of just go between one, you go on vacation, you go off a vacation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:09:27]  Huge amount of islands in this country.
[00:09:29]  I was shocked to hear about it.
[00:09:32]  And so I looked in the phone book.
[00:09:35]  I called a local organization, Bayan USA, and I got their national spokesperson, Berna, here, who looks humiliated to join me.
[00:09:43]  Berna, welcome to the show.
[00:09:45]  Thank you.
[00:09:45]  It's Bernadette.
[00:09:46]  Bernadette.
[00:09:47]  I know, but I call you Berna.
[00:09:48]  Okay.
[00:09:50]  I got to talk to you about a couple of plane crashes real quick.
[00:09:53]  And I'm just to intro this for our listeners, because these are, and I got to tell you, humiliating plane crashes, pathetic plane crashes.
[00:10:01]  And I'm not talking about those one that happened in DC, which was a big tragedy.
[00:10:05]  I'm talking about ones that are not tragedies.
[00:10:07]  Last week, a Philippines Air Force jet, an FA-50, crashed into the side of a mountain.
[00:10:13]  Now, I've never driven a jet or a car for that matter, but I know that you're not supposed to drive either of those into a solid wall of mountain.
[00:10:20]  This is from Mindanao News.
[00:10:22]  Colonel Antonio DeLuan, Jr., commander of the Army's 403rd Infantry Brigade, told reporters they requested support from the Philippine Air Force to soften the defenses of NPA rebels who had gathered near, I'm going to fuck up all the pronunciations, so don't fucking kill me.
[00:10:39]  Cabanglasan town in Bukidnon's boundary with Agusan del Sur.
[00:10:45]  So they had, seemingly the Army had called in the Air Force to give close air support for fighting against the NPA, who I looked into this as the sort of communist rebels there.
[00:10:56]  And then in early February, a plane crashed, and you got to help me with this.
[00:11:04]  Maguindanao.
[00:11:05]  Maguindanao.
[00:11:05]  Maguindanao del Sur province.
[00:11:08]  This one fucking blew my mind.
[00:11:10]  Four guys were killed, three DOD contractors.
[00:11:13]  I don't know what nationality they were.
[00:11:15]  But one member of the U.S. Marines, 22-year-old Jacob M. Durham from Long Beach, Long Beach, dead all-star.
[00:11:23]  And Durham was, quoting from NBC, trained as an electronic intelligence slash electromagnetic warfare analyst assigned to the 1st Radio Battalion, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group, official said.
[00:11:35]  He had just joined the Marines in 2021, and the aircraft was providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support at their quest of our Philippine allies.
[00:11:43]  This is from the DOD.
[00:11:45]  The incident occurred during a routine mission in support of U.S.-Philippine security cooperation activities.
[00:11:52]  What the fuck is a U.S. Marine doing dying in a plane in Mindanao?
[00:11:56]  Because these both happened in Mindanao.
[00:11:57]  Both of these pathetic, humiliating plane crashes happened in that island.
[00:12:01]  What the fuck?
[00:12:02]  Exactly.
[00:12:02]  What the fuck?
[00:12:05]  I mean, I will preface this by saying that Mindanao, for those who don't know, is the large island in the southern Philippines.
[00:12:14]  It's also where the poorest provinces are in the Philippines.
[00:12:19]  It's also where the most natural resources can be found in the Philippines.
[00:12:23]  So, and that's also where my family is from in the Philippines.
[00:12:27]  So it's an island with a long history of social armed conflict.
[00:12:33]  Yeah.
[00:12:34]  And very much related to the fact that it is a source of rich natural resources.
[00:12:41]  In the hinterlands, in the mountains, the Philippines is the fifth most mineral-rich country in the world.
[00:12:47]  Most people don't know that.
[00:12:48]  You can find most of them in the mountains of Mindanao.
[00:12:51]  And then in the lowlands, in the marsh areas, you can find oil and geothermal energy.
[00:12:58]  So it's a big site for plunder, for profit, by foreign powers assisted by the Philippine government.
[00:13:08]  So if you put it in that context, the U.S. military presence, including CIA presence, is in the Philippines.
[00:13:18]  In 2002, a CIA operative by the name of Michael Maring accidentally bombed himself in his hotel room in Davos City.
[00:13:28]  Sorry, he blew himself up.
[00:13:30]  Yeah, well, no, he blew up his hotel.
[00:13:31]  Like his bomb went off by accident.
[00:13:35]  And the FBI later had to get him out of the country, you know?
[00:13:40]  So, and there's been no official comment on that incident.
[00:13:43]  But this proves that there are U.S. operatives, U.S. military all over the Philippines, but especially in Mindanao, where there was a very strong people's resistance, people's arms resistance, not just being mounted by the new people's army, but also being mounted by groups that are struggling for their self-determination, such as the Bangsamora people, who historically have been waging their own armed struggle for secession from the Philippines.
[00:14:13]  So let me ask a couple of questions here, because if you know about the Philippines, you know, there's like a million, it's like 7,000 islands or something like that.
[00:14:22]  Mindanao is the second biggest one, also home of, like you said, Daval City, where Rodrigo Duterte is from.
[00:14:29]  And I think the one that maybe if somebody has like a little more than cursory knowledge of the Philippines, well, you'll know about that island, right?
[00:14:36]  Or maybe cursory knowledge beyond like vacation spots.
[00:14:39]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:40]  Because it's been the home of a lot of, let's say, activities in the past 50 years.
[00:14:48]  A state, I think what was a state senator from San Francisco actually was arrested in FBI sting involving fake members of the MILF.
[00:14:59]  We'll get this out of the way right now, MILF, Moral Island Liberation Front.
[00:15:03]  I just, no, we're not giggling about that anymore.
[00:15:05]  Moro-Islamic Liberation Front.
[00:15:06]  Moro Islamic, excuse me, you're right.
[00:15:07]  Moro-Islamic Liberation Front.
[00:15:11]  This guy in San Francisco was arrested, an FBI sting for promising anti-aircraft weapons to them.
[00:15:19]  But it is, you know, the Philippines has had a lot of armed resistance to colonialism since the beginning.
[00:15:26]  And a lot of people right now would be like, well, the Philippines aren't a colony.
[00:15:30]  I would maybe say that we can get into that a little bit more.
[00:15:36]  But Mindanao has been really central to a lot of that resistance.
[00:15:42]  What's like the background, a lot of this stuff?
[00:15:43]  So you're saying, there's a lot of minerals there.
[00:15:46]  There's a lot of oil, geothermal energy.
[00:15:48]  There's also several big cities there.
[00:15:50]  What kind of people live in Mindanao?
[00:15:53]  Because I think people might be surprised to hear like, yeah, Moro-Islamic.
[00:15:57]  There's Muslims there.
[00:15:58]  Yeah, so in Mindanao, we refer to what is known as the Tri people, meaning there are the 18 ethno-linguistic indigenous tribes collectively known as the Lumad.
[00:16:16]  And they live in the mountains of Mindanao, in the hinterlands.
[00:16:20]  So they are mountain people.
[00:16:22]  Then there's also the collective, 12 ethnolinguistic indigenous tribes known as the Bangsamoro people.
[00:16:33]  The Bangsamoro people are also indigenous, but they are Islamicized.
[00:16:38]  So they adopted Islam from the long history of trade with Malaysia, yeah.
[00:16:46]  So because of that, they are distinct from the rest of the peoples of Mindanao.
[00:16:51]  And so they live in the marshlands, in the lowlands, by the water, where you find oil and geothermal energy.
[00:16:59]  And they have a long history of not being colonized by Spain or by the U.S. in the long history of Philippine colonization.
[00:17:08]  So, and then you have the settlers.
[00:17:12]  The settlers are basically people, not from Mindanao, from Visayas and Luzon, the other regions, who migrated or land-grabbed in Mindanao, especially when the Philippine government at one point under Macapagal opened up Mindanao for, under the Homestead Act, for land-grabbing by settlers.
[00:17:33]  Yeah, let me ask about that real quick.
[00:17:36]  You know, people, it's funny, the history of the Philippines, you know, which I'm not an expert on or anything like that.
[00:17:43]  You know, I was reading this book about Marcos, and I think it was his father or his grandfather was like involved in this big land grabbing thing.
[00:17:51]  And it really reminded me of the Wild West days here, where people would just kind of go out into wilderness communities or wilderness communities, like the fucking wilderness, but like where people live and just sort of stake out land and maybe kill the people on it and kind of run these like big plantations.
[00:18:07]  So it was almost like a mix of the American West and the American South.
[00:18:11]  Is that what that's what went down in Mindanao?
[00:18:14]  And my family was a part of the big land grab with the Homestead Act because my grandparents on both sides settled in Davao and Surigao.
[00:18:26]  It's like, what did that do to the makeup of Mindanao?
[00:18:29]  Like, was there, because I mean, listen, you know, I think it might be a little confusing because people are like, well, indigenous isn't everyone like a Filipino.
[00:18:37]  Doesn't exactly work like that.
[00:18:38]  No, there's different, I said ethno-linguistic tribes.
[00:18:42]  So that meaning they are like ethnically different, like culturally different, and they have a different, whole different language.
[00:18:50]  Yeah.
[00:18:50]  So when you introduce settlers, it basically displaces.
[00:18:57]  That's the social impact, the massive displacement of the indigenous population, including the Moro population.
[00:19:04]  Yeah.
[00:19:04]  And so, like, I mean, I was sort of surprised to learn that even till today, especially, I mean, not even till today, it's just still going on.
[00:19:12]  There's these huge plantations all over the Philippines.
[00:19:16]  And the word plantation obviously has some bad connotations here in America.
[00:19:19]  And frankly, I don't think there's really any good connotations of it really anywhere.
[00:19:24]  And these function is like, I mean, it's like the Philippines is basically like a semi-feudal society.
[00:19:29]  Like there's these massive landowners who like run these areas, whether like provinces or just towns, really like feudal lords.
[00:19:39]  And they'll have these massive farming communities with essentially like semi-landless peasants working on them.
[00:19:46]  I know this is the case on a lot of islands.
[00:19:49]  It's the case in Mindanao as well.
[00:19:50]  Yeah.
[00:19:51]  Well, when the Spanish colonized the Philippines for like over 300 years, what they introduced was at first the encomienda system and then the hacienda system.
[00:20:03]  The hacienda system is basically like a cash crop system where you basically divide up the land into haciendas, which are basically one crop plantations for export.
[00:20:21]  And when the U.S. came under U.S. colonization, they maintained that system.
[00:20:28]  In Mindanao, because it wasn't fully colonized, you still have Landlordism, but you also have it coupled with warlordism.
[00:20:40]  Yeah.
[00:20:40]  In the sense that now the landlords, the big powerful landlords are also kind of fused with being having their own private militaries that they get from the government.
[00:20:55]  And so they also, you know, they enact terror on most landlords, big landlords in the Philippines enact terror, not just in Mindanao, but they enact terror on the people toiling their land.
[00:21:06]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:07]  I mean, so the U.S. plane that crashed crashed in this town of Empatuan.
[00:21:14]  Yeah.
[00:21:14]  Ampatuan.
[00:21:16]  And I was like, last February.
[00:21:18]  Last February.
[00:21:18]  Yeah.
[00:21:19]  And I was like, damn, that name fucking.
[00:21:20]  Yeah.
[00:21:20]  That sounds familiar.
[00:21:22]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:22]  And of course, it's the home of like a very famous massacre.
[00:21:26]  Yeah.
[00:21:26]  This happened like a big political clan.
[00:21:28]  Yeah.
[00:21:29]  So what went down there?
[00:21:31]  Well, in 2009, in the town of Ampatuan, there are two rival political clans, the Ampatuans and the, oh my God, I'm going to mispronounce Manga Datu.
[00:21:47]  Mongo dadatu.

=== Massacred In Mass Grave (16:00) ===

[00:21:49]  And essentially, one of them was in the midst of the elections.
[00:21:55]  One of them was going, had a caravan, mostly of women and journalists who were going to file candidacy.
[00:22:01]  And they were intercepted by forces that basically massacred them and buried them in a mass grave.
[00:22:09]  And like these forces are like, I was looking at this because there's this long Human Rights Watch report on it.
[00:22:15]  And I'd heard about it before.
[00:22:16]  And I kind of encountered some of the stuff where I saw some of it when I was in the Philippines.
[00:22:20]  You can't really miss it.
[00:22:22]  They're like irregular militias that are like semi, they're state-backed, but they're like semi-official.
[00:22:30]  Yeah.
[00:22:31]  That are made up of like actual officials, like police officers and like soldiers and stuff.
[00:22:35]  And then also of what is rather charmingly in the Philippines called goons.
[00:22:40]  Yeah.
[00:22:40]  So like gunmen.
[00:22:41]  Guns, golds, and goons.
[00:22:43]  Yeah.
[00:22:43]  And so like these guys basically ambushed a convoy of journalists, women, and children and slaughtered them.
[00:22:50]  And something like 56 people were killed.
[00:22:52]  And they were all put into a mass grave.
[00:22:54]  Yeah.
[00:22:54]  And I was looking into this and you know, Empetuan runs the province.
[00:23:00]  He's a governor there, put in by Marcos.
[00:23:03]  It's something like two or three dozen of his family members, all with the same last name, are like the mayor of every town.
[00:23:11]  And like every single political position in this province is made up of members of this family.
[00:23:17]  And that's something that shocked me when I went to the Philippines.
[00:23:20]  Because, you know, I just went as a tourist and I was, I was, I was, I couldn't, I went during election season.
[00:23:26]  I just noticed that all of these families were just like huge, powerful kind of like clans that controlled huge parts of the government.
[00:23:35]  And it seemed like totally crazy to me because some of these people were so obviously corrupt.
[00:23:41]  I mean, even like in the case of Empetuan, like that family was corrupt.
[00:23:46]  Obviously, they fucking massacred a bunch of people.
[00:23:49]  But then even the guy whose team they massacred, they didn't kill the guy, the guy that was running against him.
[00:23:55]  But when he got into office, he was also just corrupt and also just installed members of his clan in there.
[00:24:02]  And it's Eras' family in there.
[00:24:05]  And it's crazy.
[00:24:06]  So there's all of these fucking like militias that are essentially run by these like provincial warlords who are running around and like terrorizing peasants is what it seems like.
[00:24:16]  Well, I mean, in more society, it's still a class society.
[00:24:20]  So you have rich Moros and you have poor Moros.
[00:24:23]  So and the two rival clans are rich Moros, you know, that are rivaling with each other.
[00:24:29]  So and the MILF were known to have capitulated their arms in favor of a so-called autonomous region, right?
[00:24:46]  So but in some ways, the ongoing, which is the poorest region in the country.
[00:24:52]  Of course.
[00:24:52]  And in some ways, the neglect, the state neglect of that area serves the purpose of along alongside the Islamophobic narrative, serves to justify continuous intervention in the region, to justify, and also as a, which is a ruse for plunder.
[00:25:13]  So as long as you have lawlessness and you know conflict in that area, you can justify, and they're all Muslim, you can justify intervention, you know, you can justify we need more anti-terrorism exercises in this area.
[00:25:28]  Yeah, so like the players involved in the Mindanao insurgencies, the various discrete insurgencies that occur in Mindanao that occasionally overlap are the MILF, who, as you said, capitulated.
[00:25:42]  And then I found actually split into a party that supported the liberals and then a part that supported Bongo Marcos, which is just bizarre.
[00:25:51]  So the mil factionalized.
[00:25:53]  And then there's the MNLF.
[00:25:55]  They're older than the MILF.
[00:25:57]  Yeah, they started originally in the 1970s.
[00:26:01]  Yes, yes.
[00:26:02]  They started and they also fought during the martial law period of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
[00:26:09]  So yeah.
[00:26:10]  So both capitulated, the MNLF and the MILF, because of localized peace talks.
[00:26:16]  Yeah.
[00:26:17]  Very different than the peace talks that are currently suspended, being conducted by the NDFP.
[00:26:26]  What's a localized peace talk in this instance?
[00:26:28]  Is it just like a guy coming down and be like, fellas, it's getting a little too crazy out here?
[00:26:33]  Yeah, a localized peace talks is a peace talks that take place in the country.
[00:26:39]  So in the local area, where the usually the Philippine government, who I'll refer to as the GRP, the government of the Republic of the Philippines, usually insists on localized peace talks, which is essentially not neutral ground, right?
[00:26:52]  Because if they're the ones in political power, then whoever they're negotiating with is not at the advantage in the advantage.
[00:27:00]  Whereas with the peace talks between the GRP and the NDFP are always outside and brokered by a third government mediator.
[00:27:08]  Gotcha.
[00:27:09]  Yeah.
[00:27:09]  In Norway, I think, right?
[00:27:11]  Several places, yeah, but most recently in Norway, yeah.
[00:27:14]  So when did like the current iteration, including like the now defunct MILF, MNLF insurgencies, begin in Mindanao?
[00:27:25]  Because as far as I understood, like there was resistance against the Spanish.
[00:27:30]  This is like the brief dumb guys kind of version of it.
[00:27:33]  Like the Spanish colonize the Philippines.
[00:27:36]  Filipinos were like, this kind of fucking sucks.
[00:27:38]  Spanish are like, well, we're going to kill a bunch of you.
[00:27:40]  Americans come in.
[00:27:40]  They're like, we're not going to kill a bunch of you.
[00:27:42]  We're going to get the Spanish out of here.
[00:27:43]  They do a fake battle.
[00:27:45]  The Spanish leave.
[00:27:47]  And then the Americans just start killing Filipino people.
[00:27:51]  Am I getting this right so far?
[00:27:52]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:52]  They kill like a million Filipinos.
[00:27:54]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:55]  More than.
[00:27:56]  More than a million Filipinos, which is like late 1800s, early 20th century.
[00:28:02]  Then World War II happens.
[00:28:04]  And then like a lot of the kind of more educated, wealthier, let's say, business type of Filipinos kind of like get closer to the Japanese.
[00:28:13]  And the people that fight them are the Communist Party of the Philippines, who after the Second World War, the Americans leave, but then leave a bunch of bases there and control the government, but aren't officially colonizing the country anymore.
[00:28:29]  Or at least, you know, we say we're leaving, but we'll just leave a bunch of our puppets in charge.
[00:28:35]  A lot of the groups, these are colloquially known as the hawks, the communist groups.
[00:28:40]  The hookball hook.
[00:28:40]  Yeah.
[00:28:42]  I wasn't going to try to be insulting by trying to pronounce the whole thing.
[00:28:44]  I've tried to a million times over the years.
[00:28:46]  It's fine.
[00:28:47]  It's fine.
[00:28:48]  Some of those guys disarm or they're hunted or they're like, you know, chased out or they, you know, they try to do urban warfare or something.
[00:28:55]  It doesn't work.
[00:28:57]  And the Philippine government, like the sort of landlord class that controls the Philippines, thinks they have it pretty good until things start catching up with them.
[00:29:08]  And in the 1960s, 1970s, it seems like a bunch of things happen to go both globally and locally in the Philippines to increase repression against working people and the peasantry until there's some kind of insurgency throughout the country.
[00:29:27]  So what's the background there?
[00:29:29]  It starts in, I mean, I know it's a pretty broad question.
[00:29:32]  Very long journey of a question.
[00:29:34]  Absolutely.
[00:29:34]  We don't have to do the whole thing.
[00:29:37]  But there's basically, we go from like there being no insurgency to there being like a lot of guerrilla insurgencies.
[00:29:43]  And so what sort of let's see like the genesis of this.
[00:29:48]  Like how did this start?
[00:29:49]  Like where did the guerrilla front start?
[00:29:51]  Like what was the what was the sort of like idea of even fighting the government with guns here?
[00:29:57]  Okay, so I will start off by saying that for as long as colonialism has been around, there has been insurgency.
[00:30:08]  So insurgency in the Philippines, or like I would say resistance versus insurgency.
[00:30:14]  Resistance, armed resistance in the Philippines, what took place even prior to American colonization, starting with the Spanish colonial period.
[00:30:26]  So there were hundreds and hundreds of cases of rebellions, armed rebellion when the Spanish were in charge of the Philippines in haciendas, encomiendas.
[00:30:43]  Again, the long-standing theme here is about the people from the land are the ones resisting because the land is not under their control.
[00:30:56]  So and then when the people's army of the Philippines at that time, the Katiponan under Andras Bonifacio, were able to successfully defeat Spanish colonization, the Americans came in and under the guise of ushering in a good period.
[00:31:23]  But really what they did, they came in and they invaded.
[00:31:27]  They invaded.
[00:31:32]  By then, the U.S. was already like a new imperial power, imperialist power, in the sense that it already accrued enough wealth to start waging wars overseas for resources.
[00:31:45]  So they did so in the Philippines.
[00:31:47]  They invaded the Philippines.
[00:31:48]  It was the first U.S. war of aggression in a faraway place and for occupation and colonization.
[00:31:57]  So the Philippines was a direct U.S. colony, I would say, from the time of the invasion till about 1946, after World War II.
[00:32:10]  And then after World War II, all over the world, all of a sudden, these Western colonizers were giving their colonies fake independence.
[00:32:19]  And the Philippines was given fake independence or nominal independence by the U.S. What do you mean by nominal independence?
[00:32:26]  Neocolonialism, that's what I mean.
[00:32:28]  Meaning, you're no longer a direct colony, but the Western countries were able to find a way to still have political economic influence or control over their former colonies that's not no longer a direct colonization, but by way of having sort of like a puppet state, a puppet government.
[00:32:54]  And they would sign these like, and this happened all over, but I know that this happened in the Philippines.
[00:32:58]  They would sign like these trade deals.
[00:33:00]  They were like immensely, I mean, it was basically like extraction for the U.S. with a little bit of money on top for the landlord class and for segments of the bourgeoisie.
[00:33:11]  Yeah.
[00:33:11]  So you have now, in countries like the Philippines, which are largely agrarian, the issue becomes what we know as semi-feudalism, wherein like semi-feudalism now becomes like the economic base or the social base for maintaining U.S. dominance over the Philippine economy, politics, and other spheres of influence in the country.
[00:33:40]  Yeah, it is like, I mean, we were talking about a little bit earlier in regards to Mindanao, but like it really cannot be stressed enough.
[00:33:46]  Like large parts of the Philippines, there's just like a big ass, there's like a rich guy who's got like his retinue of like sycophants and supplicants and his court.
[00:33:58]  And then he's got like, I don't know, 500 to 5,000 guys that will just like go kill your family if you try to do like a strike or something like that.
[00:34:06]  I mean, this is not like something we're talking about from the 1920s or the 1960s.
[00:34:09]  Like this stuff happens still today.
[00:34:11]  But like this really, I mean, the Americans who, you know, I thought our whole thing was not having that kind of system here.
[00:34:19]  We kept the system that the Spanish had installed there because it served our colonial interests there.
[00:34:26]  Yeah.
[00:34:27]  So, I mean, I'll go back to these crashes in Mindanao because we started out with that.
[00:34:34]  So earlier this month on March 4th, it was reported by the mainstream media that there was this crash of a FA-50 fighter jet in Cabangla-san Bukidnon,
[00:34:55]  which is in northern Mindanao, as well as in La Paz Agosan del Sur, which is also in Mindanao, northeast Mindanao.
[00:35:08]  The context for this is the fact that there is now an escalation of U.S.-led counterinsurgency.
[00:35:16]  And these fighter jets, which were developed by Lockheed Martin and Korean Aerospace Industries, Are favored now in aerial bombing operations because they're really good in dropping bombs.
[00:35:32]  Yeah, I mean, explain to me a little bit more about that because, you know, I pay attention to the news in the Philippines and I see stuff about like aerial bombings or aerial terror campaigns even sometimes by the government on not only suspected rebel hideouts or whatever, but like on rural villages and like peasants and stuff like that.
[00:35:51]  I mean, this is this is crazy to me, right?
[00:35:53]  Like this is the Philippines, you know, we're not talking about, you know, the middle of nowhere.
[00:35:56]  This is the Philippines.
[00:35:58]  This is part of what I read as like a coin.
[00:36:02]  It's a counterinsurgency campaign.
[00:36:05]  Yes.
[00:36:07]  What the fuck is going on with this?
[00:36:09]  I mean, I mean, they're just like, the aerial stuff seems almost like a new, not new, but has been increasing in terms of how many people it's been killing and the use of it by the Philippine military.
[00:36:24]  Yeah, well, basically every, after 1946, every administration of the Philippines has had its own version of a counterinsurgency plan patterned after the U.S. is counterinsurgency doctrine.
[00:36:40]  And the common objective for each and every administration's counterinsurgency plan or coin in the Philippines is to annihilate the CPP-NPA.
[00:36:52]  So what is, just for our listeners out there, what is the CPP-NPA?
[00:36:55]  The CPP is the Communist Party of the Philippines.
[00:36:57]  The NPA is the New People's Army, its military wing.
[00:37:00]  And the CPP-NPA and its and the NDF have been waging armed struggle in the Philippines since 1968.
[00:37:15]  Actually, no, since 1969 when the NPA was formed.
[00:37:19]  So it's over 50 years old now.
[00:37:21]  It hasn't been completely annihilated, but it is a thorn on the side of the U.S.'s geopolitical strategy in that without annihilating this long-running armed resistance in the country, this armed revolution in the country, it now prevents the Philippines from being wholly consolidated for the U.S.

=== Counterinsurgency Conflicts (15:17) ===

[00:37:49]  Yeah, I mean, that's what's sort of striking about it because people who might, you know, maybe have listened to some of our episodes on the Philippines or just know about the Philippines in general, right?
[00:38:01]  Like there was this guy, Fernand Marcos, you know, maybe you know him because of his crazy wife in all our fucking shoes, which, you know, there's a lot more than that, but she's still in there.
[00:38:14]  She's still in there.
[00:38:15]  But Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law.
[00:38:17]  Yeah.
[00:38:18]  There was this, you know, there was this insurgency.
[00:38:20]  There was like a lot of violence there.
[00:38:21]  There was all these people being disappeared into camps, exiled from the country all over, or to all over the world.
[00:38:30]  And then there was the people power revolution.
[00:38:32]  Marcos flees in order to drink himself to death in fucking in Hawaii.
[00:38:38]  And bong bong Marcos plots in exile before coming back and resuming the mantle.
[00:38:48]  But part of that, and part of like the new, I think it was like a new constitution, maybe it was a new law or something, was that all of the American military bases, of which there were many, had to leave the country.
[00:38:58]  There could not be any more American military bases in the country.
[00:39:02]  And, you know, I think people, if you have like a little, one of the main like little fun facts about the CIA is that like a lot of psychological warfare techniques were pioneered by the CIA in the Philippines, sort of in conjunction with what was going on in the Vietnam War.
[00:39:20]  You know, the Lansde, Edward Lansdale and, you know, the Aswang, the big, you know, the vampire, whatever the fuck they came up with.
[00:39:28]  But, you know, it was a pretty big, like, like, there was a huge U.S. military presence there.
[00:39:33]  And then there was like, oh, no, there's no more U.S. military presence at all anymore.
[00:39:36]  And I was shocked talking to you recently to learn that there actually still are U.S. troops over there.
[00:39:43]  Well, that's the thing about fake independence.
[00:39:46]  What's qualified it as fake in 1946 is that as long as we can keep our permanent military bases in the Philippines, which back then were Subic Naval Base and Clark Air Force Base,
[00:40:02]  which at that time were the largest overseas U.S. permanent military bases of its time, and which were served as refueling stations and launching pads for U.S. wars that were being waged in the Middle East, in Vietnam, in Korea.
[00:40:22]  So those bases were very strategic for the U.S.'s war campaigns in other places.
[00:40:30]  But in 1991, mainly because of people's struggle, which kind of influenced and also compelled the Philippine Senate at the time to not renew the basis lease.
[00:40:50]  So in essence, should have shut down permanently those two U.S. military bases in 1991.
[00:40:59]  So that's a major people's victory.
[00:41:01]  The people's struggle unified collective was able to compel the Senate at the time to not renew the basis lease at that time.
[00:41:12]  And those two bases were supposed to shut down.
[00:41:15]  And they did shut down.
[00:41:17]  But the U.S., because it cannot fully let go of the Philippines, the Philippines is too important as a stooge in the region to ensure kind of military hegemony in the region, was able to circumvent that constitution.
[00:41:40]  So after that, there was a provision in the Constitution that was added that no foreign military bases would ever be permanently based in the Philippines.
[00:41:49]  So, which is, again, it's part of the victory.
[00:41:52]  But the U.S. was able to circumvent that by having a series of military agreements, which would allow for rotational presence.
[00:42:01]  That's how they get around the whole permanent presence, by having rotational presence through, at first, the Visiting Forces Agreement, or the VFA, which the VFA allows a rotational presence of U.S. military, giving them access to over 20, at the time, over 20, like ports, Philippine military ports and airfields, which in a way is kind of worse because they're all over,
[00:42:31]  they're spread out more in the Philippines rather than when there was just two bases.
[00:42:36]  Yeah, I was looking at a map and they're like really all over.
[00:42:38]  All over, yeah.
[00:42:39]  They're Mindanao.
[00:42:41]  They're like all over the place.
[00:42:43]  I mean, I think when the VFA was first ratified, it was like 20 sites.
[00:42:47]  But now, now that you have the EDCA or the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, which has added more sites, you know, it was passed under Menino Kino Jr.
[00:43:05]  And then in 2014, and then it was, and then Marcos Jr. now added more sites.
[00:43:11]  It went from four to nine.
[00:43:13]  So now you have the country, which is an island country, archipelagic country, a virtual U.S. military base because you literally have sites where you have, well, just reported where the military is through these sites, but you know that there are more, that they're undercounted.
[00:43:36]  So the country is now really open to U.S. military presence, which historically, the presence of U.S. soldiers in the Philippines is so destructive to the Filipino people because they historically leave behind toxic waste.
[00:43:51]  They themselves commit gross human rights violations against women and children and women and children in general, right?
[00:43:59]  Especially sexual assault, sexual violations against women and children.
[00:44:04]  Yeah, I mean, I remember there was a really famous case in 2006 of a U.S. Marine raping a woman.
[00:44:11]  Yeah, I mean, that was just reported.
[00:44:14]  That's a very rare instance where he was actually brought to the court.
[00:44:20]  It's so common, it's never reported, and they commit these things with impunity.
[00:44:25]  Yeah, I mean, that's something that actually extends upon like basically every U.S. overseas base.
[00:44:33]  I mean, this is a huge issue in Korea.
[00:44:35]  It's a huge issue in Japan.
[00:44:36]  Locals do not like these soldiers there because what they do is they go off their fucking bases and they fucking rape and they murder.
[00:44:43]  And they also indiscriminately just shoot people for target practice.
[00:44:47]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:48]  I mean, this is, I mean, that was that, yeah, exactly.
[00:44:50]  Or with the case of Panama, that happened as well.
[00:44:52]  And like, and so, and what strikes me is just totally absurd.
[00:44:56]  It's like, there's, why is there three DOD contractors, which I've been trying to, and I admit that maybe I could, I could do a little more research, but I spent about an hour yesterday trying to figure out exactly what these people were and who they were contracted with.
[00:45:10]  But there was these contractors flying with this U.S. Marine in this plane, and they were doing surveillance, but it's like, this isn't an active war zone.
[00:45:17]  I mean, there's, you know, there's, there's insurgent activities that happen in that part of Mindanao.
[00:45:22]  But like, you know, I thought at least the U.S. says that the U.S. is there in order to shore up Filipino sovereignty because the encroaching Chinese there.
[00:45:35]  But these guys are not out in the South China Sea.
[00:45:38]  These guys are over Mindanao in a little fucking airplane there.
[00:45:41]  So what the hell is going on?
[00:45:42]  So the GRP likes to report officially, and what's usually reported by the mainstream press is that these counterinsurgency tactics are working and that they're actually weakening the revolutionary, I mean the NPA, you know, the revolutionary forces on the ground, when in fact that's not the case.
[00:46:03]  They have not been able to fully annihilate and the NPA continues to recruit and build base areas.
[00:46:11]  And these indiscriminate bombings, I stress the indiscriminate bombings because their intention is to destroy whole villages.
[00:46:24]  Very reminiscent of, you know, this is not new.
[00:46:27]  This is very reminiscent of other Vietnam because these rural villages are the lifeline for the guerrilla bases.
[00:46:38]  These fighters of the NPA come from these communities, right?
[00:46:42]  And so these communities essentially provide them with resources, food, shelter, even intel, when there is a, you know, when the military is near.
[00:46:54]  So by destroying whole communities through aerial bombs that are indiscriminate, very similar to like when you're saying, oh, we're destroying a Hamas base area, right?
[00:47:04]  But you just indiscriminately destroy a whole hospital and surrounding areas.
[00:47:09]  They say that this is targeted towards NPA base areas, but really they're indiscriminate and they're actually the impact on the ground is they are killing civilians, dozens of hundreds of civilians.
[00:47:22]  Yeah, I mean, that's what's striking to me.
[00:47:24]  So like, as far as I understand it, the NPA, you know, they're a guerrilla organization that operates in the countryside mainly.
[00:47:36]  And, you know, so their main base of support is like the indigenous peoples and rural peoples.
[00:47:44]  And so what they do is, again, as far as I understand it, is they like, they have these relationships with these villages and they have these areas where there's like a lot of support from them.
[00:47:52]  Certainly not a lot of support from the government.
[00:47:53]  I mean, I got to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, you know, it's been a few years since I reported from the Philippines.
[00:48:00]  I got to tell you, that place is poor as a motherfucker.
[00:48:02]  I mean, I got to be real with you guys.
[00:48:04]  That shit is fucking poor.
[00:48:05]  And like the government is, if you think you fucking know corrupt, I mean, it's shocking to me how anyone, it's bizarre to me that anybody can fucking tolerate it because it is just completely, it is unconscionable the way that fucking people have to live in so much of the country.
[00:48:25]  But so these rural areas, which are completely neglected, if not already under attack by the government before the guerrillas even get there, they provide the guerrilla support and the guerrillas help them.
[00:48:35]  They help on the farms.
[00:48:36]  They have dentists.
[00:48:36]  They have fucking doctors.
[00:48:38]  They teach people how to read and all that kind of shit.
[00:48:40]  They have fucking schools.
[00:48:42]  And so to the government and to the army, which by the way, you think that when you think that I'm talking about army here, you're thinking about like, oh, some guy, like, you know, my cousin's in the army.
[00:48:52]  Like, he's a good guy.
[00:48:53]  You know, he's a soldier like that.
[00:48:55]  First of all, he might not be such a good guy.
[00:48:58]  But second of all, these are fucking gangsters.
[00:49:01]  Like, this is not like the army that you're thinking of in some fucking platonic ideal of an army.
[00:49:05]  These are people who come in, they fucking loot, they rob, they steal, they burn, they rape, they murder.
[00:49:10]  I mean, it is, it is, the Philippines Army is a fucking, is a nationwide gang, but they, they treat the villagers there then just like guerrillas.
[00:49:19]  And so that's completely what you say, indiscriminate.
[00:49:20]  I mean, it's, it's, for them, it's all guerrilla casualties because there's like no difference between the guerrilla and the and the villager there, which ironically is kind of what the guerrilla thinks too.
[00:49:32]  You know, they're all with the people.
[00:49:34]  But but it's it's it's just shocking to me.
[00:49:36]  And so the aerial campaign, it almost seems like they can just, because I haven't hearing about this for years.
[00:49:42]  Yes.
[00:49:43]  You know, I'm from the Bay, Daly City, million Filipinos.
[00:49:46]  They've been telling me about this.
[00:49:49]  They just come in and they fucking just bomb the shit out of villages in order to like not only kill people, but to erode support for the NPA.
[00:49:56]  And so what it is, is it is basic, it seems to me at least, complete just terror bombings.
[00:50:03]  Yeah, definitely.
[00:50:04]  That's what it is.
[00:50:04]  And the thing is, too, is that I will stress that this civil war between the Philippine military and the NPA has been going on for over 50 years.
[00:50:21]  And two, this civil war is internationally recognized and both parties are bound because they have, through the peace negotiations, are bound to observe.
[00:50:33]  international law and international humanitarian law.
[00:50:36]  The fact why we reject the term insurgency is because under international law, these groups have the right to fight their armed struggle, you know?
[00:50:46]  Yeah, I went to like a little fuck, because New York, you always got to go to Broadway or whatever.
[00:50:52]  I went to like this talk about the legality of the guerrilla side in the civil war in the Philippines.
[00:51:01]  And I got to tell you, I was convinced.
[00:51:05]  I'm open-minded.
[00:51:07]  But yeah, they do adhere to international law and legal strictures about the conduct of war.
[00:51:14]  Great for them, but the army is not doing that.
[00:51:17]  Yeah, so then you have international humanitarian law, which basically defines the rules of war, right?
[00:51:25]  When you have an international conflict.
[00:51:27]  And while this is happening in the Philippines, both the level of intensity of the conflict and the amount of international support one side is getting from other governments, particularly the U.S., and now even NATO countries are joining in on the counterinsurgency operations against in the Philippines,
[00:51:54]  necessitates that this is not just your normal civil war.
[00:52:04]  On the question of proportionality, you have one side that has all the resources and you have one side that has no resources, right?
[00:52:12]  Coming from the poorest of the poor.
[00:52:14]  And therefore, there must be some adherence to basic rules of war.
[00:52:19]  And in which case, most of those violations of IHL have been coming from the GRP side.
[00:52:30]  And these are all documented, well documented.
[00:52:32]  There was a tribunal last May.
[00:52:35]  We were there.
[00:52:36]  I was there in Brussels where the NDFP charged the GRP with war crimes, right?
[00:52:43]  So that's it, which is another name for violations of international humanitarian law, basically when it comes to the conduct of war.
[00:52:51]  And so when we say aerial bombings, when we say hamleting, when we say strafing of whole villages and communities in the rural countryside, that is a war crime, not just a mere violation of human rights.

=== Siege of Marawi: War Crimes Documented (02:24) ===

[00:53:07]  It's a war crime because the conduct of war has a set of rules that the international community adheres to.
[00:53:14]  Yeah.
[00:53:14]  Set by the United Nations.
[00:53:16]  Yeah.
[00:53:16]  Yeah.
[00:53:17]  I mean, I was talking to some people.
[00:53:18]  So like famously, there was the 2017 siege of Marawi, right?
[00:53:22]  Where there was like a Filipino ISIS, which I got to be honest, from what I can understand.
[00:53:30]  And listen, I'm the foremost ISIS expert in the room at least.
[00:53:33]  But from what I can understand, these guys are like kind of like, they're like, yeah, we're in ISIS.
[00:53:39]  You know, this happens all over the world.
[00:53:40]  ISIS has like real shooters in some countries, like real ISIS guys go down to like Africa and they go like to Afghanistan and stuff like that.
[00:53:48]  But like no disrespect to the Philippines.
[00:53:50]  They did not make it there.
[00:53:51]  It was like a family.
[00:53:52]  It was like a clan that essentially declared itself ISIS and like really, you know, they really did cause some trouble.
[00:53:58]  But there was a huge bombing campaign, this big siege of Marawi, and then tens of thousands of people displaced.
[00:54:05]  This happened in 2017.
[00:54:06]  It was 2025.
[00:54:08]  And those FA-50s were purchased at that time.
[00:54:12]  And they're still being used now.
[00:54:13]  They're the ones crashing.
[00:54:14]  Well, so that's what I'm saying.
[00:54:15]  It was like, it was that, that kind of, and I mean, again, no disrespect to the people of Philippines.
[00:54:21]  It was kind of cashing in on the ISIS crazy.
[00:54:23]  Yeah.
[00:54:24]  They were like, because they got, they got some, they got more money and guns because of the 9-11 war on terror stuff.
[00:54:29]  And they're like, we kind of got to re-up that shit.
[00:54:32]  We're doing, we got ISIS here too.
[00:54:34]  We need more money.
[00:54:35]  We need more fucking, we need more fucking planes.
[00:54:37]  We need to bomb people.
[00:54:38]  But it's crazy.
[00:54:39]  Like there's still people displaced from that.
[00:54:41]  Like, I mean, this siege happened, what, eight years ago?
[00:54:47]  Is that math right?
[00:54:48]  It sounds right.
[00:54:48]  Okay.
[00:54:49]  Eight years ago.
[00:54:50]  And there's still people from this town that are just like living in fucking tents.
[00:54:54]  Yeah.
[00:54:55]  I remember I 2019, 2019, I was, no, 2017.
[00:55:00]  I visited the, I guess, relief areas where the people of Marawi were placed in.
[00:55:15]  And it was really sad.
[00:55:16]  I mean, in the case of many of them, I mean, they were in an abandoned building, but then there were cases where people were just on the side of the road and dying on the side of the road from like hunger and like lack of food.

=== Displaced By War (03:25) ===

[00:55:31]  I mean, that's the same thing, but or heat, you know.
[00:55:33]  So it's really sad.
[00:55:35]  There was no government support for them whatsoever.
[00:55:39]  They just left them to die on the side of the road.
[00:55:42]  Yeah.
[00:55:42]  And it's just shocking to me that like the U.S. is deploying troops basically in support of this government and is doing shit like that.
[00:55:49]  And another fucking thing is no disrespect.
[00:55:51]  I know you're from Mindanao, so some hometown pride here, this Duterte character.
[00:55:56]  What a piece of shit, huh?
[00:55:57]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:55:59]  I mean, we've said it before on the show.
[00:56:02]  We've had some people on the show before who've maybe said this a little better than I can.
[00:56:07]  The guy's a fucking nut.
[00:56:08]  He is a nut, yeah.
[00:56:10]  You met him once.
[00:56:11]  Yeah, I met him once.
[00:56:12]  What the fuck is he like?
[00:56:13]  Well, when I met him, he was in 2014.
[00:56:19]  That's when he was trying to be cool.
[00:56:21]  I mean, he was just the mayor.
[00:56:23]  He was not running for president.
[00:56:25]  He was the mayor of Davao City.
[00:56:26]  For 22 years, he was the mayor of Davao City.
[00:56:30]  And so when I met him, it was part of a Biden USA fact-finding mission on the plight of the Bangsamora people in relation to U.S. military intervention in the region.
[00:56:43]  So I will say that back then, when we met with him, it was during a time when he was, and he changed.
[00:56:52]  He changed his tone.
[00:56:54]  But back then, he was kind of supportive of not having U.S. military presence in Davao, especially after that CIA agent blew up his hotel room, right?
[00:57:08]  So he went on the record saying, I don't want any U.S. here in Davao and in Mindanao, which is a positive statement.
[00:57:19]  But I will stress that when I met, when we were invited, our delegation was invited to his home.
[00:57:26]  And one thing I remember is that he had a lot of cars.
[00:57:31]  And he also had a lot of, I mean, he has a wife, but I think he also has other girlfriends.
[00:57:38]  Kind of an Eric Adams figure.
[00:57:39]  Very much so.
[00:57:40]  And he would say things like, I think of women like cars.
[00:57:45]  You can't have only one.
[00:57:47]  Bernadette, he said this to you?
[00:57:48]  Yeah, so what he said to, not just to me, to our whole delegation.
[00:57:52]  This is ridiculous.
[00:57:53]  It is.
[00:57:54]  So what I'm saying is that as an opportunist, he pandered, of course, to the left at the time with his progressive statements.
[00:58:01]  He brokered, you know, the release of a captured NPA.
[00:58:08]  But again, he was just pandering.
[00:58:11]  He called himself a socialist.
[00:58:13]  He did, yeah.
[00:58:14]  Not only did he call himself a socialist, he was like, I, you know, I'm, you know, I'm friendly to the NPA.
[00:58:20]  Like, this is his big thing.
[00:58:22]  I mean, I think some people might remember it, but we've got a little lot of Zoomer listeners.
[00:58:28]  He was like, he kind of came to power.
[00:58:30]  I mean, he's always been an eccentric figure, but he came to power on this like really like sort of kind of deranged, but, you know, hopeful progressive platform where he's like, I'm going to make peace with the guerrillas.
[00:58:42]  Like, he stretched a lot of sovereignties, like, U.S. out, you know.
[00:58:46]  And he's from Mindanao.
[00:58:48]  He's from Mindanao.
[00:58:48]  Which makes a big difference because as the poorest region, he's not your traditional politician coming from Manila.

=== Duterte's Peace Talks Pandered (03:25) ===

[00:58:56]  Yeah.
[00:58:57]  And that made a big and Mindanao like really claimed him.
[00:59:02]  And the Mindanao vote is a massive block vote.
[00:59:05]  Yeah.
[00:59:06]  And then things very famously changed.
[00:59:08]  And he has really changed his tune.
[00:59:10]  He really changed his tune.
[00:59:11]  And doubled down on death squads, essentially.
[00:59:16]  I mean, this is sort of the famous war on drugs that Rodrigo Duterte did, which was, by the way, I talked to, and literally, this is just, I was just walking around talking to people.
[00:59:26]  I talked to people who were just like, yeah, one day, like six guys with guns came into our neighborhood and just like shot some people.
[00:59:34]  Like, these weren't drug dealers.
[00:59:36]  These are just like our neighbors.
[00:59:37]  They just came in here and like killed some fucking people and robbed them.
[00:59:40]  And we called the police and the police was like, nope, we're not touching this.
[00:59:44]  This is a war on drugs stuff.
[00:59:45]  Yeah.
[00:59:46]  And so he essentially legalized murder.
[00:59:49]  And so like this system of like the semi-official system of like goons and these like warlord death squads that were around became like a national phenomenon where people were like essentially deputized into like killing the poor.
[01:00:05]  The police were deputized to be able to kill without without and without warrants.
[01:00:12]  And the U.S. military is backing this up.
[01:00:14]  Yeah.
[01:00:15]  I mean, this is ridiculous.
[01:00:16]  I pay taxes here.
[01:00:18]  It is ridiculous.
[01:00:19]  I mean, the Philippines has always been one of the largest recipients of U.S. support, mainly as military aid and for other types of aid.
[01:00:32]  So yeah, the Philippines, the U.S.'s foreign policy when it comes to the Philippines is a major fucking deal for U.S. taxpayers.
[01:00:40]  Yeah.
[01:00:41]  And maybe that's something to emphasize, you know, in this to your listeners.
[01:00:46]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:00:47]  That just read up on foreign policy and how where your money is going and what it's being used for.
[01:00:55]  But I, you know, I think Duterte pandered to the left, pandered to the poor, but in the end, exposed his true colors when he doubled down on insisting that the CPP NPA, after he had resumed the peace talks, were actually terrorist groups.
[01:01:17]  Yeah.
[01:01:18]  Yeah, this is something I want to talk about here because.
[01:01:22]  And then suspended the peace talks.
[01:01:24]  CPP-NPA, they're legally classified in the U.S. as FTOs, foreign terror organizations.
[01:01:31]  Yes.
[01:01:33]  Still.
[01:01:34]  Still.
[01:01:35]  And I think it's been that way for like decades and decades and decades.
[01:01:38]  Still classified as foreign.
[01:01:40]  Cold War is over, guys.
[01:01:41]  Take them off the list.
[01:01:43]  But also large parts of Europe, which they're like, I think, I don't know if the whole EU, but like, I don't really fucking know how that place works, to be honest with you.
[01:01:52]  Yeah, well, the CPP, NPA, and, well, he's dead now, but the former chairperson of the CPP, Jose Marie Cisson, who was in exile in the Netherlands, all three, the CPP, NPA, and JOMA, we know, we call them JOMA.
[01:02:08]  They were all on the EU terrorist list.
[01:02:14]  But there was a victory because in the case of JOMA, because the EU eventually dropped his listing.

=== People Living Illegally By Streams (08:36) ===

[01:02:22]  So there's a precedent there for delisting, you know, because of people's struggle and people's campaigning.
[01:02:29]  But the CPP and NPA remain on the list, both in the U.S. and in the European Union.
[01:02:35]  It's ridiculous to me because they are co-belligerents in a war with the Philippine government.
[01:02:41]  There are official peace talks.
[01:02:42]  It's like, you know what I mean?
[01:02:44]  You know, who else was a foreign terrorist?
[01:02:46]  Who?
[01:02:47]  Nelson Mandela and the ANC.
[01:02:49]  Exactly.
[01:02:49]  Yeah.
[01:02:50]  And do we look back on them, these figures, as terrorists?
[01:02:53]  No, but actually, I think a growing amount of Republicans actually, there's sort of this anti-Nelson Mandela thing going on.
[01:02:59]  But yeah, no, it's completely ridiculous.
[01:03:02]  And, you know, just back to Mindanao for a second.
[01:03:05]  What strikes me is, because this is, I always hear this from people, and people always kind of gas up where they're, you know, their country or whatever.
[01:03:11]  But like, I was here from Filipino.
[01:03:13]  It's like the Philippines are rich.
[01:03:15]  Like, they have a ton of food, minerals, like natural wealth there.
[01:03:19]  They have a ton of fucking people.
[01:03:20]  There's like 100 million motherfucking people there.
[01:03:24]  But I got to tell you, that place is poor as fuck.
[01:03:28]  I mean, my God, it's even some of the nicer places.
[01:03:31]  I was like, no disrespect, a little bit of a dump here.
[01:03:37]  Sorry.
[01:03:38]  I love the place.
[01:03:39]  I love the Filipino people, but I got to tell you, the country, it's people are living in fucking favelas.
[01:03:46]  I mean, my God, I was, I was, it's even in Manila, which by the way, great, they got to do something about that traffic.
[01:03:52]  But in Manila, like, you know, I was like, you're taking the train and you're just passing by like the worst fucking slum you've ever seen in your life.
[01:04:01]  And then there's like all these big shopping malls and these sort of like upper middle class areas and then back to slum, And then, you know, in the countryside that I went to, it was, it was the same thing.
[01:04:12]  You know, I went to like a, you know, a relatively, you know, normal town and it was still just like all these places.
[01:04:18]  People are living in fucking, there's like peasants living in huts here, you know, and people who own no land.
[01:04:22]  I was talking to this one guy and he's like, yeah, you know, there's all these people that just kind of lived by this illegally, illegally, by this fucking, on this like field, by this like stream, and like basically like grew like these small plots of land.
[01:04:37]  They're like, yeah, technically, that's like the one rich guy in our town owns all everything here, and he could evict us at any point.
[01:04:43]  And sometimes you send guys down here and they kind of rob us.
[01:04:45]  Yeah.
[01:04:47]  And that's just how it is.
[01:04:49]  And I was like, maybe that's just how it is.
[01:04:51]  Like, that's crazy to me.
[01:04:53]  Yeah.
[01:04:53]  Anyway, it was insane to me.
[01:04:55]  Mindanao, it's even crazier because there's these communities that are essentially like these indigenous communities.
[01:05:00]  And so foreign companies just come in and like start these large concerns and destroy the environment, but also extract the wealth and send it abroad.
[01:05:10]  You know, again, a little bit off the top for the local rich guy, and then the vast majority goes into some fucking bank account in Switzerland.
[01:05:17]  This is absurd to me.
[01:05:19]  Yeah.
[01:05:20]  Well, this is, I mean, this is a sad and infuriating reality in the Philippines, but it's not just in the Philippines.
[01:05:29]  It's in so many other countries where countries that are essentially neocolonies are semi-feudal countries, right?
[01:05:36]  So, and this is what I mean by when I say neocolony.
[01:05:41]  It's the sort of the maldevelopment economically of the country, right?
[01:05:45]  So you have a mineral and resource-rich country like the Philippines.
[01:05:54]  And you have other countries like the Philippines all over like Africa and Latin America where you find vast deposits of natural wealth.
[01:06:07]  But infrastructurally, the people themselves live in abject poverty.
[01:06:13]  Yeah.
[01:06:14]  And that's because politically and economically, it is in the case of the Philippines.
[01:06:22]  The Philippines has an economy that is import-dependent and export-oriented.
[01:06:32]  Meaning to say the minerals, the resources, the oil, the bauxite, you know, the nickel, the copper are all cheap raw materials for export.
[01:06:45]  There are no real viable national industries to that I would qualify as developing the local economy.
[01:06:56]  And yet the so the industry is such that these raw materials are all for export by, and plunder is mandated, you know, by the government to open up, to liberalize the territory for foreign plunder.
[01:07:14]  But yet the people remain poor because there's a lack of industry.
[01:07:19]  There's a lack of industrialization.
[01:07:21]  And so, and they are dependent on expensive, finished imports to make a living.
[01:07:29]  Yeah, I mean, that's what's so ridiculous to me is because there's such a massive labor force in the Philippines.
[01:07:35]  And yet when you go there, it's still this like really fucking, it's like a rural, rural people.
[01:07:43]  Yes.
[01:07:43]  And like the industry there, there is so much, and I cannot stress this enough.
[01:07:48]  The rich people in that country are, they are, these men are not patriots because this place.
[01:07:54]  No, they're compradors.
[01:07:55]  That's the word I was looking for earlier: compradors.
[01:07:58]  Yeah.
[01:07:58]  Which we cut that, but I was looking for that word earlier.
[01:08:02]  But these fucking comprador motherfuckers build a factory for God's sake.
[01:08:08]  You know, I mean, even just this is what doesn't make any fucking sense to me, right?
[01:08:13]  Because if I was a rich guy in the Philippines who I still want to be rich, I still want to control the country, I still want to be in charge of everything, blah, You can still build a factory, right?
[01:08:22]  Like you can still have like a like a highway that that isn't like a highway to nowhere that you have to kill 500 peasants to do.
[01:08:28]  You can still do all this, but they don't do that.
[01:08:31]  And like that is, and it's crazy because like they think, at least from my perspective, right?
[01:08:37]  And what do I know, you know, but at least from my perspective, it's like the compradors in the Philippines can't even comprador correctly.
[01:08:47]  Like they're just, it's like they're afraid of their country becoming like even like a little bit less poor because it might give people like ideas about sovereignty or whatever.
[01:08:56]  You know, you have to be so poor that all you're thinking about is your next meal or how you're going to get to work tomorrow on the fucking three-hour bus because you got displaced from your crumbling tower and the government shipped you out to a fucking hamlet three hours outside of Manila and you have to take the bus in to your fucking job where you make like a pennies every day and then bus back that night.
[01:09:14]  Like you don't have any time to think about politics or anything like that.
[01:09:16]  I mean, it's, it's crazy.
[01:09:18]  And so in Mindanao, it seems like what they do is they, and because this is like a lot of, I mean, in most of the other islands, forgive me if I'm wrong, it seems like most of the resistance was from CPP MPA.
[01:09:31]  But in Mindanao, there were these other groups as well.
[01:09:34]  There are other groups.
[01:09:34]  And the government has mostly disarmed them.
[01:09:38]  Or at least not, I mean, not disarmed, but like has neutralized them as factors, MILF, MNLF.
[01:09:45]  And now it seems like they're going after these sort of vague Islamist groups, you know, and then CPP-MPA, which seems to be like their number one enemy throughout the country.
[01:10:00]  Yes.
[01:10:02]  Yeah, I mean, correct.
[01:10:04]  You have this, and you have a lot of internal displacement now of rural communities who they are forced now to go to the cities to look for work and there's no work, right?
[01:10:16]  And the root of all of this is landlessness.
[01:10:18]  That's the root of all of this.
[01:10:20]  Landlessness for where the majority of people are living in the land.
[01:10:28]  And so they're forced to go to the cities And look for work, but there's no work because there are no industries.
[01:10:37]  And then the government under Marcos Sr. creates a program that essentially systematizes and facilitates the out-migration of Filipino workers to work as healthcare workers, construction workers, engineers, teachers in other countries where they get a big pay cut for it.

=== Landlessness And Exploitation (05:46) ===

[01:10:58]  That's what's ridiculous to me, right?
[01:11:00]  Like, if you've ever been in the hospital in California, there is a 99% chance that everybody you encounter there was a Filipino.
[01:11:10]  And it's true, like, the Philippines sends like so many people abroad, which is ridiculous because doesn't the Philippines need lawyers and doctors and nurses and teachers?
[01:11:24]  But instead of abroad, and a lot of times, especially poorer people are like preyed upon by like jobs brokers who take a portion of their income, which we've done an episode about that a while ago.
[01:11:40]  And it's totally ridiculous to me.
[01:11:43]  And like, and the overseas Filipino worker is like a mainstay in large parts of the U.S. and in Europe.
[01:11:49]  I mean, it's just, it's just, and then in the Gulf as well.
[01:11:52]  And in Singapore, where they were going to execute that woman, no?
[01:11:57]  I mean, yeah, it just, I don't know, it frustrates me greatly because I like the, I love Filipinos so much.
[01:12:04]  It's, you know, it's, it's, I mean, I love everybody, but, but it's, it's, it doesn't, I don't, it just doesn't make any sense to me why the fuck you would run a country like this.
[01:12:14]  And then the people that are, you know, in an organized way saying like, hey, actually, we don't think you should run a country like this.
[01:12:20]  We think maybe we should develop the country.
[01:12:23]  The government sends planes to drop bombs on them.
[01:12:28]  Yeah.
[01:12:30]  Yeah.
[01:12:30]  Well, I mean, again, like the now with the context of everyone, not just the U.S., but even NATO countries want in on this Indo-Pacific strategy to isolate China.
[01:12:45]  Again, like I didn't mention this earlier, but another exercise that happens regularly in the Philippines now with the U.S. is the Balikatan exercises, which were which began after 9-11.
[01:13:00]  And they're purported to be anti-terrorist exercises.
[01:13:06]  So since 9-11, the U.S. has been regularly conducting these annual military drills and exercises known as Balikatan.
[01:13:18]  And now with the War provocations and military buildup, not just in the South China Sea, but further to kind of escalate isolation of China.
[01:13:30]  It's not just the U.S., it's even other countries in Europe that are now joining these Balakatan exercises.
[01:13:37]  I believe the United Kingdom and France joined the last or will join the last few and will be joining this upcoming one in April.
[01:13:48]  Yeah.
[01:13:48]  If you're French and you're listening to this, you should really wonder why the fuck your soldiers are going to the Philippines to help train these gangster soldiers of the Philippines and how to kill fucking peasants.
[01:14:00]  Yeah.
[01:14:00]  So again, just to, you know, when you talk about these F-A-50 fighter jets that are crashing, it's all in the context of escalating counterinsurgency because now the Indo-Pacific strategy against China needs the Philippines, right?
[01:14:16]  So we really, they really need to finally annihilate this armed resistance, you know?
[01:14:22]  And that's why they're always on deadline to kill, but they have been unable to completely annihilate because the problems are not resolved.
[01:14:33]  I mean, that seems to me the problem, right?
[01:14:35]  Like, like the Philippines is unable to or unwilling, the government, the GRP is unwilling to solve the problems that led to the insurgency in the first place.
[01:14:45]  And what's crazy to me is like, despite the many decades and technological advancements that have happened since the 1960s or prior to the 1960s, but the current iteration of the struggle from the 1960s, it's like the same.
[01:14:57]  Yeah.
[01:14:58]  It's crazy to me.
[01:14:59]  I'm like, build a factory.
[01:15:03]  Like, what are you doing?
[01:15:04]  Build a fucking factory.
[01:15:05]  Disarm one warlord.
[01:15:06]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:15:06]  You know, but there's still warlords.
[01:15:08]  There's still fucking goons.
[01:15:10]  You know, I talked to this fellow out there, and this is an archetype you would recognize from any city ever.
[01:15:17]  I talked to this, like, a, a, a somewhat caddy gay hipster guy when I was in Manila.
[01:15:23]  And he was like, yeah, man, I was like photographer guy.
[01:15:26]  And he was like, yeah, earlier today, me and my friends were like filming this thing by this highway because this, like, this, this, like, local, you know, fucking bigwig landlord, warlord guy wants to build this highway with build, build, build, you know, government funds, like complete scam thing through this community.
[01:15:47]  And we went to the community to film and these guys came out of the woods, like 20 guys with guns, made us lie on the ground and then shot next to our heads.
[01:15:54]  And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?
[01:15:56]  This is crazy.
[01:15:59]  It's just, it was out of control for me.
[01:16:03]  And so I'm like, well, as long as you have the government that's like sending guys out to shoot next to people's fucking heads, of course, some of those people are going to maybe get the idea that they should organize politically and maybe shoot next to your fucking head next time.
[01:16:16]  Not that I endorse these kind of things.
[01:16:18]  But it just, that's what strikes me as crazy.
[01:16:21]  And so now instead of solving those problems, they're like importing French guys and importing fucking Americans.
[01:16:27]  Mr., what is your fucking name?
[01:16:29]  Jacob Durham.
[01:16:30]  You did not have to die, my brother, in that plane crash.
[01:16:40]  So shifting away from the Philippines for a second, because my blood's hot now.

=== International Solidarity Needed (15:31) ===

[01:16:45]  Okay.
[01:16:46]  Let's talk about overseas.
[01:16:47]  So I remember, I think this is back in 2018.
[01:16:51]  And again, Barry, I'm just talking to some Filipino guy now.
[01:16:54]  He's like, you know, the embassy down at Union Square, they have Filipino cops in there.
[01:16:59]  Yeah.
[01:16:59]  And the PNP, Philippines National Police.
[01:17:01]  And I was like, what do you mean they have cops from the Philippines?
[01:17:05]  What is he doing here?
[01:17:07]  You know, shutting down the Jalabi that existed for two years in South America.
[01:17:11]  Could not maintain it, even though it is a traditionally Philippine neighborhood.
[01:17:14]  No idea what happened there.
[01:17:16]  But it did shut down after two years.
[01:17:17]  And this is before all the crackhead stuff done there.
[01:17:19]  So if you're, anyways, this has nothing to do with this part of that.
[01:17:22]  I'm sorry.
[01:17:23]  But he explained to me that the Philippine government will send police officers and like agents overseas to monitor any sort of like dissident movements or like activist movements among the Filipino diaspora.
[01:17:41]  Yeah.
[01:17:41]  So when we talk about counterinsurgency in the Philippines, I mean, what immediately comes to mind is like the operations against the NPA in the rural countryside.
[01:17:54]  But it's important to also know that under Duterte and now continued under Marcos, counterinsurgency by the Philippine state now extends beyond the borders of the Philippines and targets overseas Filipinos and solidarity movements for the Philippines outside of the Philippines.
[01:18:11]  So including in the U.S.
[01:18:13]  So for example, Bayan USA, which is a organization based in the U.S. of overseas Filipinos, is targeted.
[01:18:22]  What's Bayan mean?
[01:18:24]  Bayan is an acronym.
[01:18:26]  Well, Bayan is a word that means people or nation, but it's also an acronym that for Bagongo Anien Sa Macabayan, which was founded in 1985.
[01:18:37]  It translates to New Patriotic Alliance.
[01:18:39]  And it was founded as an anti-fascist, anti-martial law alliance in 1985, one year prior to the ousting of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
[01:18:55]  And it factored very significantly.
[01:18:57]  It still continues to factor significantly in the anti-imperialist, not just the anti-fascist, but the anti-imperialist movement in the country.
[01:19:03]  Yeah, I always see a little buy-in guys at the fucking marches.
[01:19:06]  And Bayan in the Philippines was sort of the main force that kind of led the big protest marches against the former U.S. permanent bases, Subic and Clark, that were eventually shut down.
[01:19:19]  So, you know, with this massive and systematic out-migration of Filipinos overseas, you know, the reasons why we leave are the same reasons why peasants are being killed, right?
[01:19:29]  So in the country, are the same reasons why workers in the factories who are earning nothing are waging strikes, you know.
[01:19:40]  Because we don't really see ourselves as separate from those social problems, there is a basis to see ourselves as internal to the struggle in the Philippines for genuine liberation.
[01:19:51]  And so there's organizing overseas under that under that framework that overseas Filipinos are also internal to this struggle.
[01:19:59]  So Sobayan USA and other organizations are of that framework.
[01:20:06]  So we are also targeted by the Philippine state.
[01:20:09]  Duterte formed this new agency called the, we called it the NTF-LCAC, but it stands for National Task Force.
[01:20:17]  And local communist insurgents.
[01:20:20]  Oh, no.
[01:20:20]  And local communist armed conflict.
[01:20:23]  These guys are out of control.
[01:20:25]  And that is the agency that is overseas and planting deaths in these consular offices and planting PNP, Philippine state military in these consular offices because they're also surveilling us.
[01:20:44]  And let me tell you, again, there is literally nobody more than me who wants to end any armed conflict anywhere.
[01:20:51]  I am, they call me the dub of peace.
[01:20:54]  But this is like if we gave QAnon guys a government agency.
[01:21:00]  The Philippines has taken its biggest freaks.
[01:21:02]  And I'm not like being hyperbolic here.
[01:21:05]  Like these aren't just like regular corrupt or right-wing or whatever Filipino guys.
[01:21:10]  These are like Duterte and Bong Bong are just like my most insane minions.
[01:21:17]  You were in charge of this.
[01:21:18]  So these are like your fucking, like, these are people who like think wizards are real and shit.
[01:21:22]  And they put them in charge of these agencies and they're in they like completely operate within they're overseas as well.
[01:21:27]  Yes, that's what I mean.
[01:21:28]  That doesn't seem like local.
[01:21:30]  Isn't there NTF LCAC, local communist local part seems to really get missing.
[01:21:36]  It's more like NTF CAC.
[01:21:38]  Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, their viewpoint is that while principally NTF-LCAC is supposed to operate domestically in the country, they recognize that they like accusing many overseas groups as being fronts for the CPP NPA and also accuse us of financing them.
[01:22:00]  So therefore we also become a target, especially solidarity groups as foreign financiers of the CPP and NPA.
[01:22:10]  many of many groups now in the U.S. and especially in Europe are being slammed with these financing terrorism charges.
[01:22:19]  Yeah, and bank accounts are being frozen, you know.
[01:22:23]  So yeah.
[01:22:24]  Well, what, what, well, I mean, just as an aside here, like what if our listeners, you know, what can they, can they do anything about this?
[01:22:32]  They should join, they should join good solidarity organizations for the Philippines, such as, I would say, the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, or ICHRP for short, and Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle, or FFPS for short.
[01:22:50]  These are, I would say, the most reliable solidarity groups for the Filipino people struggle that are being targeted by the NTF-LCAT, but also have been unwavering despite the repression.
[01:23:05]  So I think I want to promote these two groups because they promote, both of them promote visits to the Philippines, which is still the main way to learn and know about what's happening on the ground.
[01:23:20]  They provide, they organize very good exposures and learning tours for people, for foreigners to come to the Philippines and also hear from the people.
[01:23:29]  They really prop the fact that there are organized people's movements on the ground that are actually in struggle.
[01:23:35]  So it's not just like a charity.
[01:23:36]  Yeah.
[01:23:38]  We are there to bring solidarity to the organized people's struggle of resistance.
[01:23:43]  Yeah.
[01:23:44]  Yeah.
[01:23:44]  I mean, that's something I, you know, really, you know, I've met with many people from these organizations and I just appreciate the politics aside, whatever, you know, not really my main thing.
[01:23:56]  My main thing is I just want a normal world.
[01:23:59]  Like that things function correctly and everything, you know, things make sense and it's not like this anarchy and chaos or whatever.
[01:24:06]  And I'm like, I really appreciate all these groups.
[01:24:08]  We're just trying to make the Philippines a normal fucking country that is not, I mean, I got to tell you, yeah, if you have a chance to go and like some of these exposure things or whatever, you should take it because I cannot stress enough.
[01:24:18]  You're like, you get there and you're like, what the, like, I would, I, the second someone told me about communism and I lived here, I'd be like, I'm going for that because this is crazy.
[01:24:27]  The way if this is capitalism, then I'm good because it is fucking, it is, well, it's, it's barely capitalism.
[01:24:34]  It is just out of control, chaotic there.
[01:24:37]  And like, this is, this is, and I got to tell you, and this is, I'm, this is, Bernadette is not co-signing this, so I just want to say, I'm speaking for myself here.
[01:24:45]  This world is out of control.
[01:24:48]  Everything is fucking insane right now.
[01:24:50]  There are psychos and freaks in like the halls of power of, I would say the vast majority of nations.
[01:24:57]  And I got to tell you, you know, I've been involved in politics for a long time.
[01:25:02]  At this point, I just want things to be fucking normal.
[01:25:05]  Like, you know, I don't, I don't want, I don't want something crazy.
[01:25:08]  I'm not shooting for the moon.
[01:25:09]  I'm not a utopian.
[01:25:10]  I just want things to function as they should.
[01:25:12]  I want things to be normal.
[01:25:13]  I want things to like, I want people to be, you know, have a family and a place to live, not live in a fucking some of these places I went to, Bernadette.
[01:25:21]  You're just like walking through, and these are dock workers' houses, which by the way, Marcos Sr., speaking of repression of overseas movements, killed, murdered, had assassinated two members of my former union, the ILWU in Seattle.
[01:25:37]  It's crazy what they're doing.
[01:25:39]  But I go to these dock workers, these hovels, and I'm like, all right, so you were a dock worker and you fucking, you're, you know, that you're like, you're, your shack has a fucking puddle as the floor.
[01:25:50]  And people are like, yeah, the shack has a puddle on the floor.
[01:25:52]  I don't want to live like this, but there's no alternative because there's nothing here.
[01:25:56]  They won this big court case.
[01:25:57]  They got all their wages stolen.
[01:25:58]  They won this big court case.
[01:25:59]  And then the Supreme Court says, hey, actually, we don't enforce that kind of thing.
[01:26:03]  So you might have won the case, but you're shit out of luck and getting your money back.
[01:26:06]  So you guys are like, yeah, I'm poor.
[01:26:07]  I've been fighting this case for four years.
[01:26:09]  This is when you're in the Philippines.
[01:26:10]  This is when I was in the Philippines.
[01:26:11]  And they made our union illegal.
[01:26:12]  Yeah.
[01:26:12]  So it's like, this doesn't make any fucking sense to me.
[01:26:15]  And this is, this shit happens all over the fucking world.
[01:26:17]  People act like animals.
[01:26:19]  These people who run these fucking countries act like fucking animals.
[01:26:22]  And we're human beings.
[01:26:24]  So I would say that, you know, there are no real domestic remedies, legal domestic remedies in the Philippines, because at the end of the day, it's a neocolonial system.
[01:26:33]  And so international solidarity becomes very important.
[01:26:36]  You know, I would say that we should really, and this is where I thank like the Palestinian Solidarity Movement for really kind of turning somewhat of public opinion on armed resistance that we haven't really seen before and really invoking international law and international humanitarian law when it comes to resistance in the region.
[01:27:02]  I think we need to start also applying that same framework in other contexts, like especially in the Philippines where you have one of the longest running armed revolutions happening historically, right?
[01:27:14]  That is also being branded as a terrorist group.
[01:27:18]  And we should start with questioning who are the terrorists.
[01:27:21]  Yeah.
[01:27:22]  You know, is it the people doing the terrorists?
[01:27:24]  Yes.
[01:27:24]  You know?
[01:27:25]  Yes.
[01:27:25]  We should start questioning terrorists.
[01:27:27]  We should start campaigning for the delisting of many of these groups and really exposing who the real perpetrators of terrorist acts are.
[01:27:36]  Yeah.
[01:27:37]  I mean, it was the CIA that blew up a fucking bomb in a hotel, blew up a fucking hotel.
[01:27:42]  So solidarity is important.
[01:27:43]  Solidarity to also not just to really change the public narrative of liberation movements all over the world, including in the Philippines.
[01:27:53]  Yeah.
[01:27:55]  Well, Bernadette, thank you so much for coming on the show.
[01:27:57]  I hope this was not too much of a humiliation for you.
[01:28:00]  No, just the gong, the gong.
[01:28:02]  You don't like the gong.
[01:28:03]  All right.
[01:28:04]  No.
[01:28:05]  Fact check.
[01:28:06]  Yeah.
[01:28:07]  Before we started recording, you were like, what the fuck is that?
[01:28:09]  Yeah, like it's a gong.
[01:28:11]  And then I hit the gong.
[01:28:12]  It was forecasted.
[01:28:13]  Yeah.
[01:28:14]  And I was like, okay, well, first of all, that gong has a happy face on it.
[01:28:19]  Because it's smile.
[01:28:21]  Would you be?
[01:28:22]  Perhaps you'd prefer a frowning gong.
[01:28:24]  A what gun?
[01:28:25]  A frowning gong.
[01:28:26]  Frowning gong.
[01:28:27]  Or a falangong.
[01:28:28]  Perhaps you'd prefer a falong.
[01:28:30]  Oh my God.
[01:28:31]  Oh, wait.
[01:28:32]  That's your favorite thing.
[01:28:32]  Last thing.
[01:28:33]  No, last thing, last thing, last thing, last thing.
[01:28:34]  And we don't want to get into this too much.
[01:28:37]  Are the president, so the president of the Philippines is a guy named Bong Bong Marcos, which, by the way, I know that that's a common nickname.
[01:28:44]  I met people named Bong.
[01:28:46]  I never met a Bong Bong, but I met a Bong.
[01:28:49]  Bong Bong Marcos vice president is Sarah Duterte.
[01:28:53]  Yeah.
[01:28:53]  Rodrigo Duterte's beautiful daughter.
[01:28:58]  Also unhinged.
[01:29:00]  She's also fucking crazy.
[01:29:03]  We'll talk about that later.
[01:29:04]  They're actually mentally ill.
[01:29:07]  They're like now threatening to have each other assassinated openly in the press.
[01:29:12]  I'm not being an exaggeration in very broad strokes.
[01:29:17]  You know, the Duterte-Marcos alliance was kind of, has always been very unstable.
[01:29:25]  Yeah.
[01:29:26]  Because the main characteristic of this alliance is that it's tactical because they are rivals.
[01:29:32]  They are political rivals.
[01:29:35]  But they were also protecting each other from in the 2022 elections.
[01:29:42]  They formed this very unstable alliance to defeat to defeat the opposition under Lenny Robredo, the Liberal Party.
[01:29:54]  But their main character, they were never really truly a solid alliance.
[01:29:58]  And so now their rivalry is becoming more the dominant factor in these recent developments of them hating each other in public, right?
[01:30:08]  Because now they are both scrambling for power.
[01:30:13]  During Duterte's term, Duterte pandered a lot to the Chinese and opened up the country for Chinese economic projects and infrastructure, which, of course, historically the Marcos clan has been very loyal to the U.S.
[01:30:28]  And so that provided a major contradiction there.
[01:30:33]  Now you have them in cahoots, but also I would say the most reactionary institution of the Philippine government is not actually the president.
[01:30:44]  It is the military.
[01:30:45]  Oh, yeah.
[01:30:46]  And so you have a very factionalized military, fractured military that was founded under the U.S. colonial period and acts as a proxy army for the U.S.
[01:30:58]  And so when you have Duterte pandering to China, that's not good For the Philippine military, because of course that they are loyal to the U.S., right?
[01:31:13]  Yeah, they don't like that.
[01:31:14]  And now, so now you have this power play.
[01:31:18]  And really, you know, historically, the Philippine military has waged coups for power to topple Marcos when he proved himself to be a liability.
[01:31:32]  But now, yeah, we are now in this venture where you have this growing, I would say, rift now between the Duterte's and the Marcoses being played out in this open declarations of killing each other, right?
[01:31:48]  So, yeah.
[01:31:51]  And now, there's no way to run a country.
[01:31:53]  And most recently, part of this is not just with Sarah, but also with Rodrigo Duterte himself, where, you know, they opened up these hearings, congressional hearings, on his war on drugs, where he was found to be guilty.
[01:32:08]  And now the ICC is declaring that it's going to issue a warrant for his arrest.

=== Icc's Impact On Leadership (04:34) ===

[01:32:16]  Very much, you know, I would say influenced by ICC's issuance of warrants against Netanyahu.
[01:32:24]  I would say that's a little much.
[01:32:26]  If, you know, if I'm in the U.S. government here, which I'm not, but if I was, I'd be like, well, it seems like two of these guys that we were kind of rocking with and their military is both being charged by the ICC against crimes against humanity and then war crimes.
[01:32:39]  Well, it's just Duterte that's it's really just because of the war on drugs, crimes against humanity.
[01:32:44]  But still, but that doesn't mean that, you know, Marcos is innocent.
[01:32:48]  Definitely, Marcos is not innocent.
[01:32:50]  He's also guilty of war crimes because he has continued a lot of Duterte's policies.
[01:32:54]  Well, and also he is an arrest warrant out in the U.S. domestically.
[01:32:57]  Yes.
[01:32:58]  Anyways, so yeah.
[01:33:00]  So bottom line is this: they were protecting each other, but now they're going against each other.
[01:33:07]  Yeah, I mean, this is this is crazy.
[01:33:09]  I'm sorry.
[01:33:09]  I don't care what you believe.
[01:33:11]  This is no way to run a fucking country.
[01:33:12]  These people are out of their minds.
[01:33:14]  I mean, yes, because that's also the nature of their class.
[01:33:18]  So, I mean, it's not crazy.
[01:33:22]  This is actually very much their characteristic.
[01:33:25]  I know, but then I'm sick of the neuroses of the bourgeois.
[01:33:28]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:33:28]  You know, there's not even that many of them.
[01:33:33]  Anyways, Bernadette, thank you so much for coming to this.
[01:33:35]  Yeah, bottom line is: support the support the people and support their resistance.
[01:33:40]  Well, as everything goes crazy, let's keep our eye on supporting the people who are actually fighting for change.
[01:34:01]  In another thing.
[01:34:02]  Yeah.
[01:34:02]  Yes.
[01:34:02]  Another thing.
[01:34:04]  I can't stand.
[01:34:09]  I just, I can't stand the way that so many people walk.
[01:34:13]  Because they're, I don't like people don't walk straight.
[01:34:16]  I think just you pick a lane.
[01:34:18]  Pick a lane for sure.
[01:34:20]  And a little bit of weed, like a slight, you have a, there's like a certain angle you get.
[01:34:25]  Like a lane.
[01:34:26]  It's a lane.
[01:34:26]  It's a lane.
[01:34:27]  Exactly.
[01:34:27]  No, you're right.
[01:34:28]  You're right.
[01:34:28]  It's a lane.
[01:34:29]  But sometimes these people are all over the place.
[01:34:32]  Look, I cut a lot of slack if the person is elderly, if they're clearly, you know, injured or infirm.
[01:34:37]  I'm giving people a lot of leeway, I think.
[01:34:40]  But the slow, it's because they're looking at their phones.
[01:34:42]  No, sometimes people are just stupid.
[01:34:44]  I always think it's because of the phone.
[01:34:45]  And then I look, I pass.
[01:34:47]  I after about five times of like trying to pass and then, oh, they moved.
[01:34:51]  Oh, they moved.
[01:34:52]  And they don't seem to have any care in the world that they're blocking the way.
[01:34:55]  They look at me like I'm fucking going to knock them over.
[01:34:58]  Which I might.
[01:34:58]  Yes, I want to.
[01:35:00]  But here's another thing: the scooters on the sidewalks.
[01:35:04]  Now, this has come up on the show before.
[01:35:07]  Yesterday on Beep Street, but that's near us.
[01:35:12]  Okay.
[01:35:14]  A guy, vroom, and I'm listening.
[01:35:17]  On the sidewalk.
[01:35:17]  On the side.
[01:35:18]  And it happens all the time.
[01:35:19]  It happens all the fucking time.
[01:35:21]  And I'm listening to music.
[01:35:22]  I've got my earphones in.
[01:35:23]  I'm listening to music.
[01:35:24]  So I can't hear.
[01:35:25]  And these things are fucking quiet anyway.
[01:35:27]  So I probably wouldn't be able to hear it anyways.
[01:35:29]  Zooms past me.
[01:35:30]  It literally feels like a near-death experience.
[01:35:33]  Get in the street.
[01:35:34]  There is an entire street.
[01:35:36]  It's not a side scoot.
[01:35:37]  Sidewalk.
[01:35:39]  You go in the bike lane if you feel afraid.
[01:35:40]  Just on the way here, and I've pointed this out to you before.
[01:35:43]  People, like, look, I look at my phone 10, 11, 12 hours a day, but there's places for doing that.
[01:35:49]  And the absolute worst place to do that has got to be the steps coming up from the subway platform.
[01:35:54]  Oh, my God.
[01:35:55]  And it's not just the looking at the phone.
[01:35:57]  You're stopping four steps up, and just there's a whole line of people, a sea of people behind you.
[01:36:02]  It should be legal to kill people that do.
[01:36:05]  It is absolutely outrageous.
[01:36:07]  This happens to us every time.
[01:36:09]  Every time Trunan leaves this studio as a unit and we go to the train as a unit.
[01:36:15]  And a lot of the times we're like, oh, fuck, it's like rush hour.
[01:36:18]  We want to get on the train and there's, we, you know, let's catch it.
[01:36:21]  I can hear it.
[01:36:21]  Let's go.
[01:36:21]  Let's go.
[01:36:22]  And there'll be some fucking loser looking at his shit out there.
[01:36:26]  It's not even that big a staircase.
[01:36:28]  Just get to the top of it.
[01:36:29]  There's plenty of room.
[01:36:29]  Get in the corner and look at your phone.
[01:36:31]  You're stopping on the steps.
[01:36:33]  Oh, it's outrageous.
[01:36:34]  It's crazy.
[01:36:34]  It's outrageous.
[01:36:37]  Just people, guys, this country is becoming barbaric.
[01:36:40]  We got to do something about it.
[01:36:41]  Just keep your wits about you.
[01:36:43]  Have some situational awareness.
[01:36:45]  It's ridiculous.
[01:36:46]  You live in a society.
[01:36:48]  Absolutely.
[01:36:48]  Act like it.
[01:36:49]  Used to anyway.

=== Barbaric Times (01:03) ===

[01:36:50]  We used to.
[01:36:51]  We no longer do.
[01:36:52]  Law of the fucking, I don't want to say jungle because you know what?
[01:36:54]  The monkeys in the toucans out there, they get along just fine.
[01:36:57]  You don't, you don't, you don't, you know, everyone gets on the vine there.
[01:37:00]  That's a circle of life.
[01:37:01]  It's a circle of life.
[01:37:02]  There is no circle of life here.
[01:37:03]  It is a circle of barbarity out on these streets.
[01:37:06]  But with that being said, let's get out on them.
[01:37:08]  Well, I am producer Young Chomsky.
[01:37:10]  My name is Brace.
[01:37:12]  And can you just like, should we just, I don't know, what have you, what have we done in the past when Liz hasn't been here?
[01:37:17]  I feel it's been a while.
[01:37:19]  Yeah.
[01:37:19]  I did, well, last time you weren't here, there was some kind of sign-off.
[01:37:22]  I think I was like, I don't remember.
[01:37:24]  She does that part.
[01:37:25]  So that's not.
[01:37:27]  But, yeah, I don't know.
[01:37:28]  I was like, so long.
[01:37:31]  Just end it.
[01:37:53]  Come in.